Jonathan Comey - NFL Blitz: Super Bowl matchup worth watching

With all due respect to Patriots fans (and their perverse joy in the Jets' defeat Sunday), Packers-Steelers is the Super Bowl that the majority of football followers and league bigwigs wanted most.

JONATHAN COMEY

With all due respect to Patriots fans (and their perverse joy in the Jets' defeat Sunday), Packers-Steelers is the Super Bowl that the majority of football followers and league bigwigs wanted most.

I'd have to say this is the most appealing overall matchup since Joe Montana and the 49ers faced off against Dan Marino and the Dolphins back in 1985 — although that turned out to be just another NFC blowout in a series of them.

What makes this matchup special?

It might be a bit early to call Aaron Rodgers a Hall of Famer, but he's had the best first three starting seasons of any QB in history — 86 touchdowns to 31 interceptions and a rating of 99.5. A Super Bowl win this year, and all he'll need to do is stay on a reasonable career path to make it to Canton.

As for Ben Roethlisberger, he'd get my vote for the Hall even if he didn't play another down past this Super Bowl. He's got a career record of 69-29 in the regular season, 10-2 in the postseason and two championship rings.

Since the start of the Super Bowl era, the Packers and Steelers have combined for 22 championship game appearances, nine Super Bowl titles and an additional six championships from the Packers' pre-SB era. Both franchises could practically field full teams of former players now in the Hall of Fame.

And in the last 20 years, they have a total of seven non-winning seasons between them.

Mike McCarthy and Mike Tomlin aren't big names, but they're big talents. McCarthy didn't have a big pro career or even a particularly rich NFL assistant career, but GM Ted Thompson saw something he liked in McCarthy and hired him in 2006. He's been particularly great with quarterbacks, coaxing one of Brett Favre's best seasons out of him in 2007 and helping Rodgers become elite.

As for Tomlin, when you're 38 years old and already have a head coaching Super Bowl ring, you're a talent. His career record of 48-22 (including playoffs) is sixth all time among coaches with 50+ games.

The Packers and Steelers don't have offenses that are quite as good as New England's was this past year, but their edge in defense has been pretty clear.

Green Bay's Cullen Jenkins and Clay Matthews are terrors up front, and corners Tramon Williams and Charles Woodson have the edge on just about any group of receivers.

As for Pittsburgh, most teams would be happy to even have one player as disruptive as Lamarr Woodley, James Harrison or Troy Polamalu. Put them together with a defensive head coach who happens to have one of the great D-coordinators of all time in Dick LeBeau, and you've got something special.

Sorry, Pats fans. You're vocal, and you love your team, but you lose perspective at the drop of a hat and take success for granted. And when times were truly lean, like in the early 1990s, you put your jerseys in the closet and rooted for the Bruins.

I'd give the Packer fans an ever-so-slight edge on the Steeler fans, if for no other reason that they actually own the team. It's really amazing that a city as small as Green Bay (fewer than 100,000 people) can not only support an NFL franchise but elevate it. Milwaukee is two hours away, folks — it's Green Bay's team.

Steeler fans are legendary as well, noted for their unflagging passion and savvy — and the national fans forged in the 70s are as loyal as the ones who grew up in the steel mills.

I don't know if Jerry Jones has plans to sneak his famous Cowboys cheerleaders into the mix, but neither the Packers or Steelers have cheerleaders — a rarity, since 26 of 32 franchises have them.

To me, it's a blessing. The only thing more irritating than seeing the cheerleaders' frozen smiles during a game that's lopsided in favor of the other team is fans freaking out upon seeing themselves on the Jumbotron "» with their team down in the fourth quarter.

There's no guarantee that the game will be close just because the point spread shows Green Bay at -2.5 or so right now, but it's one of the most narrow spreads in Super Bowl history. The last time Vegas thought the game was so hard to pick was the Ravens-Giants Super Bowl a decade ago, where Baltimore was favored by just three but dominated.

Who will win this one? Damned if I know. But I do know that I can't wait.

Jonathan Comey is sports editor of The Standard-Times. E-mail him at jcomey@s-t.com

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